Vocational Vision: Empowering Youth

Beyond Resilience: Taking Responsibility for the Future

There’s a critical imperative at this moment, to more effectively build capacity within our communities for socioeconomic resilience in these chaotic times of social unrest, political instability, and ecological collapse. We need to create better access to living wage work, affordable homes, healthy food, and a truly sustainable economy.

A central component of a holistic solution is effective vocational training programs, which empower communities to self-determine their local economic outcomes and create good jobs close to home.

For decades, the federal government has invested hundreds of billions of dollars into workforce training programs, and yet the needle doesn’t seem to be moving in meaningful ways for those most in need of support.

On average only 50-60% of participants report active employment 6 months after completion, including youth that enter a trade school or pre-apprenticeship program. All things considered, this is a decent success rate, and improves upon past years, but we must do better if we’re going to rise to meet the moment and create the solutions needed to address the shortage of qualified workers.

Existing programs for underserved youth in communities of color are finding that the greatest challenge they face, leading to the staggering attrition rate, is that the youth need more support, socially and emotionally, and sometimes financially, to follow through with the requirements of completing the training programs.

In these situations when support is lacking, the inner stress level is too high. The anxiety of all the demands they’re facing in life becomes overwhelming. The desire to learn a new trade and secure a career path can be overshadowed by a lack of focus resulting from the stress.

Trauma-informed treatment and recovery programs recognize the challenges people face in moments of emotional and psychological dysregulation, and how stress can trigger these states in a flash. The skills needed to reregulate a triggered nervous system must be a core component of any vocational training program, especially those that are designed to meet the needs of underserved youth in historically excluded communities.

The primary public funding program that invests in workforce development for vulnerable communities is the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. First authorized in 1998, the program has provided more than $200 billion dollars of funding to develop the US workforce and skilled labor. Yet, over that same time period, critical labor shortages throughout the construction trades seem to be getting worse, even though many of the workforce training programs supported by WOIA are focused on construction apprenticeship vocational pathways.

So what gives? How can $200 billion dollars over 35 years consistently miss the mark in achieving a more robust pipeline for skilled trade labor?

And when we zoom out into the context of the other changes that have occurred over the same period, it becomes clear that societal pressures are imposing a greater burden on the working class (and professional class) which means it literally requires significantly more labor to produce the financial income necessary to live a comfortable life in the US.

We believe solution must go deeper than the basic employment skills, technical competencies, and safety training that are the focus of most labor training programs. Youth require a mentorship environment with a supportive peer community, constituent-led program development, and a focus on their psychosocial well-being as a prerequisite for the program’s more technical training curricula.

The most recent WOIA program requirements are beginning to catch up to the true needs of the underserved communities, and are now requiring that qualified providers include wrap-around social services and mental health care for participants, as well as guaranteeing stipend income for their participation.

And that missing component is best described as a “presence first” approach for youth development programs. In any training environment, there’s an end goal in mind, whether that’s learning objectives, a group project, or completing a task.

Yet if the only focus of the student’s experience is jumping right into the technical and process details, then the “training” becomes a chore while setting them up for failure by not attending to their basic needs first. This dynamic erodes opportunities for the true value of development experience which is for youth to have the opportunity to “test drive” a new identity as a future leader in their chosen field.

A “presence first” approach requires a deep understanding of the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the workplace, and a culturally competent curriculum that makes space for the social-emotional learning that is needed to help the participants cope with the social anxiety, stress, and distraction they may be experiencing so they are more capable of feeling connected to the group cohort.

Vocational Vision: Empowering Youth To Build Their Dreams

InflectionPoint’s Vocational Vision youth development curriculum was created after a series of discussions with youth mentorship experts and industry executives, exploring how to best meet the needs of developing youth and prepare them to meet the demands of their chosen trades and professions.

We call our framework Vocational Vision, in contrast to vocational training, because we are focusing on addressing the psychosocial health and well-being of youth first and foremost, and providing social-emotional learning skills, developing relational awareness, and emotional intelligence EQ through supportive mentorship to ensure the program moves at the pace of each student’s unique needs.

When a young person is encouraged to check-in, say hi to the group and share about their day at the start of each class, this simple group relational practice cultivates a deeper sense of self-awareness in the young person.

By focusing first on creating a sense of welcome, empathy and compassion grows within the group, and the result is a more connected cohort that is able to collaborate more effectively in an interactive learning environment.

I’ll close with a brief story from our latest pilot program, PowerU: Youth Industries, that we completed in summer 2019 in partnership with Sigma Beta Xi: Youth & Family Services.

Our cohort was a mix of Black and Latinx young people between 14 - 20 years old, including students identifying as LGBTQ, struggling from social anxiety, depression, ADHD, and many living in extreme poverty conditions much of their lives. Students could select any career path of their choice, within the three industry verticals of design/construction, healthcare, or media/hospitality.

After forming teams for each vertical, they were asked to collaboratively envision a project that they want to see in their community, and their final project was to create a public presentation showcasing their project vision, and discussing each person’s role in the team.

The project they envisioned was the creation of a full-service community health and wellness center, which offered emergency housing, soup kitchen, mental health services including service animals, in addition to a recreational gym, nutritional programs, and youth career training programs.

They worked together to create the vision, build a functional website using Squarespace.com, and prepare a group presentation where each student participated in the public speaking to showcase the project. The photo gallery at the end of this post is their final project website.

While the day-to-day facilitation was conducted by Mr. Anthony Jackson of IYCU, as the program developer, I was offered the opportunity to be the mock-CEO to interview young people for a potential job at the wellness center they envisioned.

These few hours I spent interviewing the 12 students that completed our program were among the most fulfilling moments of my career. I was amazed at the introspective insights these young people learned over a summer-long program, and the improved perspective and outlook that they all developed toward their lives and future.

I’ll leave you with some insights that our graduates shared in their mock-interviews.

If you’d like to learn more about our Vocational Vision program, or join the conversation about innovative workforce development programs, please join our newsletter, and schedule a free 30-min consultation call to explore your interests and needs.

If you’re interested in supporting programs like PowerU: Youth Industries, you can donate to Sigma Beta Xi: Youth & Family Services, and support their ongoing efforts to provide innovative vocational training opportunities for their youth.

*This Vox.com article provides some great insights into the nuances of “older generations” (e.g. everyone over 35yrs old), trying to relate to and help younger generations (particularly 16-26yr olds). Spoiler alert: Older people’s opinions about younger people are typically wrong. Younger folks are actually better behaved and more mature in many ways than previous generations, i.e. less drug use, more responsible sexual behavior, better at delayed gratification. Moral of the story - we think “the kids are gonna be alright,” and that they will still need a lot of help and support!